And.This.Too
From Auden:
The sky is darkening like a stain,
Something is going to fall like rain
And it won't be flowers.
Fucking.Fuck.Fuck
I don't have more sophisticated words for what just happened than that – and this:
All things will be made worse. Just like in 2016, except this time with more anger, more intention, less discretion, more open corruption, less oversight, fewer consequences – and more deaths and destruction. Damned near the full authority and power of the government, of American institutions, will be deployed to accomplish their ends – maybe only a thin Democratic majority in the House to gum up the works just a little bit.
The worst people will be in charge or protected. And anyone who pushes back will be removed and replaced with someone who won't – a four-year(-or-longer) Saturday Night Massacre.
Every time I think of some new aspect, my brain gives me a way in which it can/will be made horrific. Advances made will be rolled back, hope will be broken, as will people. 1930's-Germany-style governmental control will become the norm, as will the easing of punishments for those who act violently independent of government.
A lot of already-marginalized people are gonna be in real danger and our capacity to protect them, and to do good more broadly, has just about vanished.
This is not the saddest I’ve ever been, but it is the most defeated I’ve felt. It's much worse than 2004 – and for good (read: bad) reasons.
And this:
[O]ne of the essences of hell [is] the unceasing potential for things to become worse than you fear. –> Charles Taylor
And this (and yes, I see the irony):
*"Prediction"
*—Mikhail Lermontov, 1830
A year will come for Russia, a dark year
When Royalty no more his crown will wear,
The Rabble who loved him once will love forget,
For Blood and Death will richest feast be set;
The fallen law no more will shield the weak,
And maid and guiltless child in vain will seek
For justice. Plague will ride
Where stinking corpses fill the countryside,
And flapping rags from cottages demand
Help none can give, while Famine rules the land.
Dawn on thy streams will shed a crimson light;
That day will be revealed the Man of Might
Whom thou wilt know. And thou wilt understand
Wherefore a naked blade is in his hand.
Bitter will be thy lot; tears flood thine eyes,
And he will laugh at all thy tears and sighs.
A.Summer.Gone
I was moving smoothly, updating this blog, reading my old (truly horrible – I was young) blog, and kinda having fun doing all of it. And then Summer started hitting, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is when I stopped doing almost anything productive or fun. A trip here, a Summer cold there, a typhoon or two, general malaise and dismay, etc.
It’s abating now, Summer, so maybe it’s time to get back to doing things like this. We’ll see if that continues.
As for now, I’m so far behind on my dumb monthly updates that it’s almost absurd.
Five.Years.Gone
Monday, a national holiday here, marked five years since my father died. Early on a pre-Covid Monday morning five years ago, he died in Portland Oregon, 8,000km away.
–––
I knew this day – the fifth anniversary – would come, of course, but it's been shockingly fast.
In the first four anniversaries, I did something I thought he’d enjoy doing – having hot and sour soup, for example, in a Chinese restaurant; or a latte, say. But this year – the bigger, half-decade anniversary – I couldn’t think of anything to do. It was weirdly stressful, until I realized he’d say something like, “The fuck do I care, I’m dead? – have fun.”
And so, in a way, that’s what I did. I tried to go to a museum, which is something I’ve done a couple times in the last five years. But, looking at my mapping applications, realized the museum I wanted to go to is closed on Mondays. 1.
Instead, I quickly decided to go to a shop I’d been meaning to visit, and then to try to find a coffee shop near there, and have a latte. So I visited the shop, walked from there (in Daikanyama) to another section of town (Sangenjaya), to see if the items I’m looking for were in a shop there, and spent the day roaming around, before grabbing dinner on the way home,
–––
I didn’t have fun, exactly; memories don’t stray too far from the surface. But I did enjoy the wandering around.
Later, I watched a couple more episodes of “Shogun” (2024) and then spent some time remembering. The remembering is important, but it’s also painful. Those nerves are fragile and touchy and getting too close is punishing.
–––
My dad’s been dead for five years. It has gone by heartbreakingly fast.
How the fuck has it been five years?
–––
1 Or so I thought! Because Monday was a national holiday, the museum was in fact open. Instead, it was closed on Tuesday, the following day. Guess how I (and some lady who walked up behind me as I was reading the sign) found out?
2024.May.Albums
Nope, I ain’t listen to albums at all in May. I took a trip, got sick for a couple weeks, and listened to the Kendrick-Drake beef (well, the Kendrick side) a couple thousand times.
I have so many thoughts, but it's so late, I'm unsure they're even worth writing down. But god damn, how many times does one dude have to warn another dude?...
But zero albums. That trip was fun, the cold was bad and long, and the rap beef was fun af.
Kendrick good, yo.
2024.April.Albums
Empire Burlesque – Bob Dylan (iPhone)
Knocked Out Loaded – Bob Dylan (iPhone)
Down in the Groove – Bob Dylan (iPhone)
Oh Mercy – Bob Dylan (iPhone)
Under the Red Sky – Bob Dylan (iPhone)
In the Aeroplane over the Sea – Neutral Milk Hotel (iPhone)
Plans – Death Cab for Cutie (iPhone)
Thank You for Today – Death Cab for Cutie (iPhone)
In the Aeroplane over the Sea – Neutral Milk Hotel (iPhone)
In the Aeroplane over the Sea – Neutral Milk Hotel (iPhone)
Thank You for Today – Death Cab for Cutie (iPhone)
Thank You for Today – Death Cab for Cutie (iPhone)
Thank You for Today – Death Cab for Cutie (iPhone)
Tommy (As Performed by The London Symphony Orchestra and Chambre...Tommy Original Cast Recording – Various Artists (iPhone)
Give Up – The Postal Service (iPhone)
Like.To.Remember
Firefox still exists, but I assume this extention disappeared ages hence. But poetry, dear reader, lasts forever.
One of the great things about Firefox is you can add little extentions to it, so that, say, you can search any number of sites from the wee search box that's provided. You just find a new one and add it.
My favorite extention is a series of weather forecast icons at the bottom right of the browser window. The forecasts update frequently, and can be costumized to show any number of days (within reason), but that's not why I like having them there.
I like the extension because its forcasts are occasionally - not always, but sometimes - poetic. A couple days ago, it said, I swear, "Clouds Containing the Sun", instead of 'mostly-cloudy'. Right now it says (about tomorrow) 'Times of Clouds and Sun'.
I've just finished English as She is Spoke and these wee forcasts sound awfully like something from that book; they sound as if they've been run thru not-very-good machine translators a few times, before finally being forced back into delightful English.
Saving.Ryan's.Privates
Aside: That's the second-funniest (or at least silliest) porno title: "Saving Ryan's Privates". (The funniest, and one of the best bits of parody in human history altoghether, is “A Clear and Pleasant Stranger”, which remains just absolutely inspired.)
I recently rewatched “Saving Private Ryan” and some of the things that annoyed me when I was younger and more/less easily annoyed annoyed me still. I'll leave those for another day. But something I hadn’t been able to put my finger on after rewatching it a couple weeks ago, or so, is well-stated by Adam Gopnik below.
Looking again at my defunct, 20-year-old blog, I found this, which addresses a nagging, undefined bother the rewatch gave me:
From An Old Interview With Adam Gopnik
Robert Birnbaum: When you use the word 'shallow' about America's sense of history, I think that may be generous. It would seem to be regularly trivialized...
AG: I was stunned by that when Saving Private Ryan opened in France. The Americans did all the fighting. Not only were there no French people involved in the war, but no Canadians, no Brits. One of the things about Omaha Beach is that it was a horrible fuck up. It was the one fuck up on D-Day. The Canadians took their beaches. In a relatively untroubled way the British took theirs. The Americans just fucked up. Yet, we represent that fuck up as the only event and as in itself heroic.
The interview (which I have not yet reread in full, but quoted at the time) also contained these two unrelated but noteworthy observations from Gopnik:
Essayists generally — and certainly me particularly — tend to be more like performers than novelists. Novelists are like architects or builders. They are willing to sit in a room for five or six years and build something and they at some level don't give a damn what the public thinks. They want to make a cathedral for themselves to live in and then they open the doors. If you come in to worship that's fine. And if you don't that's fine, too. Essayists aren't like that. At least this one isn't. You have to have a bit of the ham in you. You like to do the thing and feel that the people are reacting.
And:
At some point as a writer you learn it's not what you want to do, it's what you are capable of doing, what you do well.
One of my favorite things is listening to writers talking about writing.
I.Have.Moments
Ages hence, I wrote this, which I recall occasionally, and was entertained to reread (edited lightly for brevity and clarity):
Maybe I'm not as smart as I sometimes think I might be, but the other day I bought some Shirakiku's "SOFT DRINK" becuase 5 of them were only 99¢, and I thought they might be entertaining to experience. Because the package advised to "KEEP FROZEN", I found them in the freezer just now. I popped one open, and... I don't know what to do with it. The... bottle, I guess, is 3 inches tall or so, with a mouth that's no bigger than 3/4 of an inch. The stuff inside looks like a kind of steady-state applesauce that might, theoretically, squoozle out. But it doesn't move.
My agile tongue can barely reach the bottle's innards, and, unique in the universe, gravity has no effect on it. So I just stare at the little container occasionally (like a mouth-breather contemplating a revolving door), wondering what alleged characteristic(s) make(s) it either soft or drinky.
What it needs, I think, is the soft touch of a radial saw, to really open up its mysteries.
How.About.That
Teaching a lesson earlier today, I saw “rack my brain”† for maybe the first time (as differentiated from "wrack my brain", with a W). Or, if I'd seen it before, I never noticed. So I checked some dictionaries to see if the problem lies with me or if I'd found a simple misspelling. That led me to this, which is fascinating.
† See also, “nerve-racking”.
2024.March.Watched
Curb Your Enthusiasm (S02E08-09) (MacBook)
Warriors-Knicks (MacBook)
Spurs-Thunder (MacBook)
Warriors-Raptors (MacBook)
Curb Your Enthusiasm (S02E10) (MacBook)
Curb Your Enthusiasm (S03E01) (MacBook)
Warriors-Bucks (MacBook)
Curb Your Enthusiasm (S03E02-08) (MacBook)
Warriors-Spurs (MacBook)
Curb Your Enthusiasm (S03E09-10) (MacBook)
Curb Your Enthusiasm (S04E01-02) (MacBook)
Warriors-Lakers (MacBook)
American Fiction (MacBook)
Anatomy of a Fall (MacBook)
Curb Your Enthusiasm (S04E03-05) (MacBook)
Warriors-Grizzlies (MacBook)
3 Body Problem (S01E01-03) (MacBook)
Curb Your Enthusiasm (S04E06) (MacBook)
3 Body Problem (S01E04) (MacBook)
Curb Your Enthusiasm (S04E07-08) (MacBook)
Saving Private Ryan (TV)
Curb Your Enthusiasm (S04E09-10) (MacBook)
3 Body Problem (S01E05-07) (MacBook)
Curb Your Enthusiasm (S05E01) (MacBook)
3 Body Problem (S01E08) (MacBook)
Warriors-Heat (MacBook)
Curb Your Enthusiasm (S05E02-03) (MacBook)
Warriors-Magic (MacBook)
Warriors-Hornets (MacBook)
The Gentlemen (S01E01) (MacBook)
48 titles watched.
2024.March.Albums
Years ago, back in the States, I started to listen to all of Dylan chronologically. And then iTunes decided to obliterate the "Dylan Discoveries" playlist I was making as I went along. That, and a cross-Ocean move, killed my progress. I've been meaning to complete it ever since – or to start again, it's been so long.
Well, in March, I started again. And, because of it, I ended up listening to a shitload of Dylan – and nothing else since starting. (As I write this, Beyonce's latest has been out and all-the-news, but remains unheard by me.)
The dude is incredible. His run from "Bob Dylan" to "Self Portrait" is absolutely top-shelf, world-class, extraordinary.
25 titles – the most in a month thus far:
Thank You for Today – Death Cab for Cutie (iPhone)
String Along – The Kingston Trio (iPhone)
The Last Month of the Year – The Kingston Trio (iPhone)
Make Way – The Kingston Trio (iPhone)
Bob Dylan – Bob Dylan (iPhone)
Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan – Bob Dylan (iPhone & HomePod)
Another Side of Bob Dylan – Bob Dylan (iPhone & HomePod)
Bringing it All Back Home – Bob Dylan (iPhone & HomePod)
Times They Are a-Changing – Bob Dylan (iPhone & HomePod)
Highway 61 Revisited – Bob Dylan (iPhone)
Blonde on Blonde – Bob Dylan (iPhone)
John Wesley Harding – Bob Dylan (iPhone)
Nashville Skyline – Bob Dylan (iPhone)
Self Portrait – Bob Dylan (iPhone)
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid – Bob Dylan (iPhone)
Dylan – Bob Dylan (iPhone & HomePod)
Planet Waves – Bob Dylan (HomePod & iPhone)
Blood on the Tracks – Bob Dylan (iPhone)
The Basement Tapes – Bob Dylan & The Band (iPhone)
Desire – Bob Dylan (iPhone)
Street-Legal – Bob Dylan (iPhone)
Slow Train Coming – Bob Dylan (iPhone)
Saved – Bob Dylan (iPhone)
Shot of Love – Bob Dylan (iPhone)
Infidels – Bob Dylan (iPhone)
2024.March.Sneezes
95 of the mofos.
A.Little.Wit
I subscribed to Harper's magazine two months ago and have yet to receieve my first issue – or, enough time has passed, my second. Who knows if I ever will; I'm dubious.
In one of their subsriber e-mails, they liked to a 1961 article† about writing your Congressman/etc. It was both well done and timeless – aside from names, it could likely be published today mostly unchanged. It included this little bit, which I thoroughly enjoyed:
"Dear Sir: Fellow on the radio says to write your Congressman so just thought I'd drop you a line. Yours truly."
2024.February.Sneezes
A prosaic 76.
2024.February.Albums
Codes and Keys – Death Cab for Cutie (iPhone)
Narrow Stairs – Death Cab for Cutie (iPhone)
The Photo Album – Death Cab for Cutie (iPhone)
The Photo Album – Death Cab for Cutie (HomePod)
Thank You for Today – Death Cab for Cutie (iPhone)
Kintsugi – Death Cab for Cutie (iPhone)
Traveling On EP – The Decemberists (iPhone)
Picaresque – The Decemberists (iPhone)
I’ll Be Your Girl – The Decemberists (iPhone)
The King is Dead – The Decemberists (iPhone)
The King is Dead – The Decemberists (iPhone)
Picaresque – The Decemberists (iPhone)
Picaresque – The Decemberists (iPhone)
Thank You for Today – Death Cab for Cutie (iPhone)
Codes and Keys – Death Cab for Cutie (iPhone)
Ultimatum (Expanded Edition) – The Long Winters (iPhone)
Picaresque – The Decemberists (iPhone)
Look, the point of this was to listen to more full albums, primarily full albums I've never/rarely heard before.
I know that. But I did not stick to that in February....